


Through the Partition (Scenes from a Koshonin AU)

by tsuristyle



Category: SMAP
Genre: Koshonin AU, M/M, but with 2tops, lusting after serial killers, sexy kind of crazy serial killers, while dealing with police conspiracies and yakuza politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 23:26:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9146677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsuristyle/pseuds/tsuristyle
Summary: Nakai closes the door behind him, turning to face the familiar glass partition. The man on the other side slouches lazily in his chair, legs sprawled, wrists dangling handcuffed in front of him. For a convicted serial killer, he looks damn inviting, and like he knows it, too.Kimura lifts his head, mouth twitching into a faint smile. "You again. Come to ogle me some more?"(The first and last scenes of an AU inspired by the Koshonin drama, albeit with Nakai as a regular investigator. And 2tops. Warning for someone describing a fairly gory murder.)





	

Nakai closes the door behind him, turning to face the familiar glass partition. The man on the other side slouches lazily in his chair, legs sprawled, wrists dangling handcuffed in front of him. For a convicted serial killer, he looks damn inviting, and like he knows it, too.  
  
Kimura lifts his head, mouth twitching into a faint smile. "You again. Come to ogle me some more?"  
  
Nakai stays standing, keeping his distance from the partition. Kondo, the Chief of Police himself, assigned Nakai to this case; he's not going to betray his boss's confidence by getting distracted. "Hachihei Himuro. 23. Pachinko attendant. Friend of yours?"  
  
Kimura's smile fades. "Hachihei? Womanizing scumbag. What about him?"  
  
"You knew him, then." Nakai flips a page in his documents, running his eyes over the details of the case. "What'd he actually do?"  
  
Kimura shrugs exaggeratedly, the same feigned ignorance as ever. "Beats me. Not my business what _that_ side of things is up to." He lifts his cuffed hands to run them through his hair, a motion Nakai can't help but watch surreptitiously. "Is that it, or did you just wanna keep staring at me under your eyelashes?"  
  
"We found him in the Sumida river this morning," Nakai replies, pointedly focusing on the documents and not the man in front of him. "According to autopsy results, he was stabbed in the throat, heart, both hands and ankles, and in a triangular pattern on the stomach, making for a total of nine times." He turns to the page of photographs, holding it out towards the glass. Kimura blanches and looks away. "All in a neat and symmetrical fashion, you might notice. Sound familiar?"  
  
Kimura frowns in recollection. "Nine times... a triangle..." His eyes widen. "The same as me?"  
  
"Don't ask me, _you're_ the one who killed them." Nakai slaps the documents down on the chair, stepping closer to the glass. "And someone out there liked your technique enough to copy it. I'm sure you must be flattered."  
  
Kimura glares up at him. "I told you, I don't remember." He glances down at his handcuffed wrists. "You'd have to be insane to do something like that."  
  
"Aren't you?" Nakai presses closer, the cases flashing through the back of his mind as vivid as if he had just read them moments ago. "You stabbed them in the throat first, so they couldn't scream. Then the hands and ankles, not where it would bleed the most but where it would hurt the most, then the stomach, twisting the knife as you pulled it back out each time. And _then_ \--"  
  
Kimura lunges forward, bodily hitting the partition with a hard smack. "I _don't remember_!" He buries his face in his hands, leaning heavily against the glass. "The more you tell me, the more I--" He shudders, shaking his head. "Do you really think I did it?"  
  
Nakai stares at the long-haired man, barely a step away, as if he could simply stretch out a hand to touch his shoulder. Kimura had claimed not to remember anything from the very start-- yet had been with all the victims at the time of their deaths, had the murder weapon and matching DNA found in his apartment, had a history of getting into fights that had seen him in and out of the police station countless times already. He's guilty, beyond a shadow of a doubt. And yet... "Do you?"  
  
Kimura lifts his head, meeting Nakai's gaze for a moment. Then he turns away, pressing his back to the glass with a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "If I'm insane, I'd rather be on this side." He drops bonelessly back into his chair, running his hands through his hair again. "What do you want to know?"  
  
Nakai almost wants to ask what he means-- but this is work, he reminds himself. He picks up the documents on Hachihei, and takes a seat.  
  
\--  
  
 _[THE UNWRITTEN MIDDLE: Nakai continues the murder investigation to a background of police and yakuza politics, aided by fellow officers Shingo and Tsuyoshi, and forensics officer Goro. But for some reason, Kimura's mental state mysteriously grows increasingly confused with every visit Nakai pays him...]_  
  
\--  
  
Nakai races through the murky Asakusa back alleys, steam creeping up though the cracks in the pavement. Everything has been a lie.  
  
He still has one of the transcripts in his pocket, of Kondo, the Chief of Police himself, talking to Kimura. He'd visited a prisoner no one but Nakai had cared about, with increasing frequency, always focusing on one thing.  
  
 _Tell me how you killed them, Kimura.  
  
I told you, I didn't--  
  
Then shall I describe it to you again?  
  
\--it wasn't-- me--_  
  
 _Perhaps, Kimura, perhaps. But there's a man in a very high place who would rather no one know the difference. I believe you even used to work for him..._  
  
Nakai skids to a stop in front of an unassuming, yet curiously well-kept building. This is it, the home of the man Kimura used to work for. The head of the Asakusa yakuza.  
  
In Nakai's other pocket is a blood test, taken when Kimura had been brought in and prevented from ever seeing the day of light. He'd found it after hours of digging through archives, the transcripts still running through his mind. And now, with Kimura supposedly 'escaped' and on the run...  
  
There was only place he would be. Nakai draws his gun, and steps inside.  
  
The house is darkened, the first floor devoid of guards. Not even unconscious guards, just empty. Not likely to be the doing of an influential, paranoid yakuza boss.  
  
He takes each stair cautiously, keeping his breath as silent as possible. There's a faint light down the hallway, a door open halfway. Nakai edges along the wall, listening.  
  
"--look, I can offer you whatever you want, just calm down--"  
  
The boss, voice low but edging towards panic, no doubt, as his guards fail to respond. Nakai takes one deep, steadying breath, and rounds the doorjamb, gun raised.  
  
The boss is backed against the edge of his bed, hands raised somewhere between friendly negotiation and terrified surrender. Nakai barely notices him, though, because his entire focus is drawn to the man standing between them.  
  
Kimura looks back at him, and smiles faintly. "You again." There is a knife his hand, pointed directly at his former boss's chest. "Are you here to take me back?"  
  
 _Throat, wrists, ankles, stomach_ \-- the crime scenes fill Nakai's mind, flooding his senses with memory. There's no partition now. But he forces himself to hold his gun steady. "It wasn't you."  
  
Kimura laughs, a soft exhale of a noise. "I can almost remember doing it, now. I heard the details so many times, pictured it so many times." His voice drops to a strained whisper, fingers tightening on the knife. "I can't tell anymore."  
  
"It wasn't you, Kimura." Nakai takes a step forward. Kimura snaps around, brandishing the knife, calm rapidly slipping away. "Why should I believe _you_?"  
  
"Because I have proof," Nakai answers, taking another step. "There was a blood test no one saw." Another step.  
  
"Stop--" Kimura grips the knife with both hands, the tip shaking. "Stay back-- _please_ \--"  
  
Another. "Someone drugged you, Kimura. There was no way you could even have been conscious at the time of the crime." Nakai meets Kimura's eyes-- they're only a handful of steps apart, almost close enough to reach out and touch-- and lowers his gun. "You're not insane."  
  
The knife trembles between them, Kimura staring back at him wide-eyed. Then, slowly, it begins to drop--  
  
"Oh, you found the place." There's a _click_ behind Nakai, the unmistakeable sound of a safety being drawn back. "You can help me clean up, then."  
  
Kimura's grip tightens again. Nakai looks as far back over his shoulder as he dares; Chief of Police Kondo stands in the doorway, a calm expression on his face. And, of course, a gun pointed at Nakai's back.  
  
"You're the one who killed them, aren't you." Nakai raises his hands slightly, his gun still held loose in one hand. "And you tried to frame Kimura for it. Why?"  
  
"I didn't _try_ to, I _did_." Kondo's voice is triumphant. "You know better than anyone what kind of people they really were, anyway. The scum of the earth, the ones who dirty the world with a pretty face and get away with it. Use one of their own to clean things up a bit, and the world's a better place."  
  
 _One of their own_. Nakai bites the inside of his cheek. "Better for who? The police?"  
  
Kondo sighs. "You and your stubborn sense of justice. You want to do a policeman's job?" Hard metal presses into Nakai's back. "Shoot him."  
  
"What?" Nakai meets Kimura's eyes, inhaling sharply. The knife still hovers between them, tip trembling.  
  
"Shoot him. No one will blame you for defending yourself from a crazed serial killer." Nakai can practically _hear_ Kondo smile. "Especially when they find you stabbed to death just like the rest of them."  
  
Kimura's eyes widen. The blade stops trembling.  
  
"Well, Kimura? Do you want to be shot? It would be so easy, you know. Just like all the others."  
  
Nakai can see it, as vivid as all those crime scenes: a shot or a stab, and Kondo takes care of whoever remains-- as well as the yakuza boss, setting it all up to look like a tragedy he was too late to stop. _Don't listen to him,_ he thinks, looking desperately into Kimura's eyes. _I believe you, I know you, I_ know _you're not a killer_ \--  
  
There's a motion behind Kimura-- the yakuza diving towards his pillow-- and the gun pressed to Nakai's back jerks away. "Stay fucking still, you--"  
  
Kimura drops the knife and throws himself at Nakai, tackling him sideways. Two gunshots ring out, almost at the same time-- and Kondo collapses to the floor, clutching his side. On the bed, the yakuza boss clutches a matching wound in his shoulder, gun slipping from his hand in pain.  
  
" _Dammit_ ," Kondo gasps, shirt staining under his hands. "Dammit, you weren't supposed to--" He curses again, voice choking off, and passes out.  
  
Kimura lifts his head, looking down at Nakai. The taller man had shielded Nakai completely, their bodies tangled together from head to toe. "Are you-- alright?"  
  
Nakai blinks up at him, so close he can make out every color in Kimura's eyes. The distance between them has been closed so suddenly and thoroughly, it's overwhelming. "Kimura. Yeah-- yeah." He smiles, not sure whether to laugh or cry as relief floods through him. "You saved me."  
  
" _You_ saved _me_." Kimura wraps an arm around Nakai's shoulders, burying his face in his neck. "Nakai. _Nakai_."  
  
Nakai lifts his arms, gun forgotten on the floor, and holds Kimura. It feels _right_ , like he's wanted to ever since he first laid eyes on the man. Like he's always wanted to reach beyond that partition, but never knew if it was out of temptation or compassion.  
  
Now he knows. It was to save Kimura.  
  
\--  
  
They leave the police station, after all is said and done, and stand on the sidewalk in the night air.  
  
"So Kondo was the one who broke you out." Nakai glances up at Kimura. "Did he threaten you to go with him?"  
  
Kimura shakes his head. "I don't remember clearly. He kept talking to me, telling me what I had to do."  
  
"He'd been brainwashing you, from what I read in the transcripts. You'd probably have done anything he said." Nakai sighs. If he'd noticed something was off sooner...  
  
"Not everything," Kimura corrects. He meets Nakai's eyes, taking a step closer. "He made one mistake, and that was thinking that I would hurt you."  
  
Nakai gazes back at him, acutely aware of the distance closing between them again--  
  
An expensive car pulls up in front of them with a screech, the window rolling down. It's the yakuza boss, with one arm in a sling. "I don't like to owe favors," the man growls, glaring at Nakai. "But you saved my life _and_ gave me one over the police this time. So name it and we'll call it even."  
  
Nakai looks from Kimura to the boss, and grabs Kimura's wrist. "No one bothers him. Ever."  
  
The boss snorts, but one corner of his mouth twitches into something like a smile. "Done. Now stay outta my turf." He roars off down the street, disappearing into the distance.  
  
"Not likely," Nakai mutters under his breath, and turns to Kimura, still holding his wrist. "So, how's it feel to be free?"  
  
Kimura is staring at him, as if in disbelief at Nakai's request. Then, a grin slowly breaks across his face, and he twists his hand around to circle Nakai's wrist in return. "Good. _Really_ good." He glances down at their hands, then up again. "I could use a place to stay, though."  
  
Nakai closes the last step between them. "I think I can help you with that," he says, and reaches up to pull Kimura into a kiss.  
  
There's no partition between them. And now, Nakai thinks with certainty, there never will be again.


End file.
